My classmate brought up a good point about teaching L2 in different context. That was actually I was going to talk about here. While, the first thing I want to address my opinions here is about teaching phonetics.
I don't know why that learning or teaching phonetics sounded pretty boring to me, unless someone really enjoys how funny to see others try to produce some sounds. It is not hard to produce those easy one, but as for those tough ones, I was thinking how could we EFL/ESL teachers help our learners to get it? It is true that we can definitely teach them by demonstrating, by imitating, by drilled exercise. However, I don't think there is more that we can do. The same as we teach vocabularies, grammars, it is very important to teach the sounds in a context. Therefore, we could learn the sounds in words, in sentences, in texts. Doing minimal pairs is one kind of exercise students could do. Teachers can design some other controlled, guided and communicative practice as well. When I was a students, the communicative exercise is what we missed. Actually, this kind of practice can be a part that our students really enjoy doing it.
As for teaching English language in ESL and EFL contexts, there is a huge difference. There is possbility that both EFL and ESL teachers learned the same L2 as students do. Take myself as an example, if I go back to teach in China again, my Chinese linguistic knowledge and English linguistic knowledge can help me undstand learning English as a foreign language in a better way. My personal learning experience could be anothe asset to my teaching. However, ESL teacher may confront bigger challenges, since the student group could be more diverse. Students' different language and cultural background may "push" ESL teachers to learn linguistic knowledge about some languages. It can be a good opportunity to learn, but it can also make it more difficult when trying to find out how we can best help these students.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Learning Phonetics
I tend to have a reading habit, that is, always connecting what I am reading with my prior experience. Maybe this just matches the theories of our literacy development: new information interacts with our existing background knowledge, then this interaction contributes to the L2 literacy development.
To be frank, I would have no idea about what IPA is if I did not enroll in this program. The time I began to learn English pronunciation was the 1st year of my middle school. My teacher learned English almost all by himself and at that time, British English was very popular in our country. In my university course, I don't have the memory that one of professor mentioned IPA symbols as well. Actually, what I learned at university is kind of a combination of American English, British English and New Zealand English, since I have professors who studied in US, from US & New Zealand, who studies British English in his whole life. When I began to teach English in middle school, American English was popular and all the textbooks are in American English. I don't think they used IPA symbols, either. That's why I was kind of struggling to get those symbols which are different from what I've already feel familiar with. Unfortunately, I usually messed them up easily. This is consistent with a Hungarian proverb: " What is learned in the cradle lasts until the grave."
Anyway, I really liked the part about the place and the manner of articulation. These knowledge help people to get the right sound in a comparatively easy way.Fro example, I think I have problem in produce dark /l/. I tried to do it as the what Finegan talks about the features of this sound, my friends said I was able to get it now. I strongly believe these knowledge could be very helpful to adult learners. However, I need to carefully think about how to integrate this knowledge in our pronunciation teaching to younger learners, especially elementary kids.
To be frank, I would have no idea about what IPA is if I did not enroll in this program. The time I began to learn English pronunciation was the 1st year of my middle school. My teacher learned English almost all by himself and at that time, British English was very popular in our country. In my university course, I don't have the memory that one of professor mentioned IPA symbols as well. Actually, what I learned at university is kind of a combination of American English, British English and New Zealand English, since I have professors who studied in US, from US & New Zealand, who studies British English in his whole life. When I began to teach English in middle school, American English was popular and all the textbooks are in American English. I don't think they used IPA symbols, either. That's why I was kind of struggling to get those symbols which are different from what I've already feel familiar with. Unfortunately, I usually messed them up easily. This is consistent with a Hungarian proverb: " What is learned in the cradle lasts until the grave."
Anyway, I really liked the part about the place and the manner of articulation. These knowledge help people to get the right sound in a comparatively easy way.Fro example, I think I have problem in produce dark /l/. I tried to do it as the what Finegan talks about the features of this sound, my friends said I was able to get it now. I strongly believe these knowledge could be very helpful to adult learners. However, I need to carefully think about how to integrate this knowledge in our pronunciation teaching to younger learners, especially elementary kids.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
L1 Acquisition
After reading only a couple of chapters of Essential Linguistics by Freeman & Freeman (2004), I found this is a book that you feel easy to get into. Linguistic knowledge is explained in an interesting and lively way which immediately moved my fear of feeling bored when reading linguistics away.
As for the views of the first language (L1) acquisition, I think the insights from different researchers are valuable. L1 learning does relate to developmental psychology and the importance of environment. However, neither of the above theories could give us a full picture of how L1 is learned. That is why they were challenged by the theories of linguistics. Chomsky’s Generate Grammar indicates that many sentences may have a surface level and a deep level meaning, which is kind of similar to Finegan’s two of the three faces of language. I cannot help thinking if the meaning of a sentence or the way to express a meaning (active or passive) is situational. If a child just says something without any context, s/he could make it really ambiguous; while, if the sentence is said in a particular situation, would that be confusing as well? Universal Grammar (UG) always sounds too hard for me to believe. My question is: If there is a universal grammar for children to develop their L1, why would some children have much more difficulties in L1 learning than other children, even some of them have defect on this issue? Why would this built-in knowledge not seem helpful to them? Or maybe this is a question we need to ask cognitive psychologist?
Freeman & Freeman’s views of reading, writing and 2nd language (L2) learning reminded me of my own language learning experiences when I was young. I think I was taught to read in the way that word recognition view describes. Chinese pinyin system came first in my first grade’s Chinese language class; then we began to learn vocabularies and read aloud after the teacher or classmates or read by ourselves. Understanding a text was the last thing. Comparing to “sociopsycholinguistics view”, I certainly can see the drawbacks of the way I learned. However, I still think that reading aloud should be a part of learning to read, because I do not think silent reading can help develop our phonology skills as well as reading aloud, especially for beginners. I learned writing in a traditional way, too. I was curious about my current writing skills if I was taught in a process way. Maybe I could see that if I teach my future students through this method.
I guess it is known that traditional method in English teaching was quite popular in China. Actually, it still is in some areas. We had to do a lot of drills and exercise in our English learning. Imagine if more communicative activities were used in our classrooms, there would not be so many English learners are so struggling to improve their speaking skills, I think.
The last point I want to make here is about the Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis. On Page 41, it says: “Once past that period, people are not able to acquire a second language.” I was wondering if there is a bias here. I believe there are examples in our real life that people who past that period came to the US and they can still “acquire” English. It depends on how long and how much effort it takes. The CP might exist; however, a young child and an adult both have advantages in their L2 learning. These are just my thinking, though.
As for the views of the first language (L1) acquisition, I think the insights from different researchers are valuable. L1 learning does relate to developmental psychology and the importance of environment. However, neither of the above theories could give us a full picture of how L1 is learned. That is why they were challenged by the theories of linguistics. Chomsky’s Generate Grammar indicates that many sentences may have a surface level and a deep level meaning, which is kind of similar to Finegan’s two of the three faces of language. I cannot help thinking if the meaning of a sentence or the way to express a meaning (active or passive) is situational. If a child just says something without any context, s/he could make it really ambiguous; while, if the sentence is said in a particular situation, would that be confusing as well? Universal Grammar (UG) always sounds too hard for me to believe. My question is: If there is a universal grammar for children to develop their L1, why would some children have much more difficulties in L1 learning than other children, even some of them have defect on this issue? Why would this built-in knowledge not seem helpful to them? Or maybe this is a question we need to ask cognitive psychologist?
Freeman & Freeman’s views of reading, writing and 2nd language (L2) learning reminded me of my own language learning experiences when I was young. I think I was taught to read in the way that word recognition view describes. Chinese pinyin system came first in my first grade’s Chinese language class; then we began to learn vocabularies and read aloud after the teacher or classmates or read by ourselves. Understanding a text was the last thing. Comparing to “sociopsycholinguistics view”, I certainly can see the drawbacks of the way I learned. However, I still think that reading aloud should be a part of learning to read, because I do not think silent reading can help develop our phonology skills as well as reading aloud, especially for beginners. I learned writing in a traditional way, too. I was curious about my current writing skills if I was taught in a process way. Maybe I could see that if I teach my future students through this method.
I guess it is known that traditional method in English teaching was quite popular in China. Actually, it still is in some areas. We had to do a lot of drills and exercise in our English learning. Imagine if more communicative activities were used in our classrooms, there would not be so many English learners are so struggling to improve their speaking skills, I think.
The last point I want to make here is about the Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis. On Page 41, it says: “Once past that period, people are not able to acquire a second language.” I was wondering if there is a bias here. I believe there are examples in our real life that people who past that period came to the US and they can still “acquire” English. It depends on how long and how much effort it takes. The CP might exist; however, a young child and an adult both have advantages in their L2 learning. These are just my thinking, though.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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